


Marzi vs. Wild

by Mike_Smith



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:09:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 10,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21894169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mike_Smith/pseuds/Mike_Smith
Summary: Shot down during a routine cargo run, Royal Military Pilot Marzi must survive the wilderness and avoid capture by an unknown enemy.
Comments: 14
Kudos: 2





	1. Another Day at the Office

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CozyMochi](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=CozyMochi).



> Yamcha Fan Club Disclaimer: This story features concepts and characters based upon Dragon Ball, which is a trademark of Bird Studio/Shueisha and Toei Animation. Marzi is an original character created by CozyMochi. This is an unauthorized work, and no profit is being made on this work by me. This story is copyright of me. Download if you like, but please don’t archive it without my permission. Don’t be shy.
> 
> Continuity Note: This story is set about midway through the seven year period between DBZ Episodes 199 and 200.

[26 July, Age 770. Earth.]

The direct flight from Central City to Yahhoy took thirteen hours. It was Marzi's favorite route, and whenever the Royal Military needed a cargo drop to Yahhoy, she always volunteered. Since everyone else at Furry Air Force Base saw the run as a chore, she usually got the assignment.

In the past, such a long flight plan would have been unnecessary, but the world had changed during Marzi's lifetime. Officially, there was a single world government, ruled by a single head of state: King Furry. In practice, the periphery of his domain was never entirely under his control. Warlords, criminal organizations, and rogue militias were an ever-present threat, and the Royal Military was hard-pressed to contain it. Then the creature called Cell appeared. No one was entirely sure what Cell was or where it came from, but King Furry deployed a massive R.M. force to answer the challenge, and it was completely destroyed. Ultimately, Cell was defeated, and his victims were somehow miraculously resurrected, but the world's infrastructure would not recover so easily. During Cell's rampage, a number of cities had been destroyed or badly damaged, including key airports which the R.M. normally used for refueling and maintenance. Without them, the only practical way to fly to and from Yahhoy was a thirteen-hour nonstop flight.

Normally, Marzi enjoyed these trips in the cockpit of a Jackrabbit AV-84. It was an older model, but it had the best fuel capacity and efficiency for the long trip, and Marzi was familiar with the design. Her cargo could be shrunk into Hoi-Poi capsules provided by the Capsule Corporation, and Marzi could carry hundreds of tons of supplies and building materials in the pocket of her blue aviator jacket. But this time, she was hauling livestock, and living things couldn't survive inside a Hoi-Poi capsule. So for this flight, Marzi traded in her Jackrabbit for the even older Pelican PU-12. It used more fuel, but with larger fuel tanks it could fly further.

The only downside was that the Pelicans had much less sophisticated auto-pilots, so Marzi had to keep a closer eye on her instruments. The cargo had been sedated for the flight, but it still frustrated Marzi that she couldn't step away long enough to take a quick peek. She loved animals, and the idea of carrying animals in her plane sounded like a dream come true, but the reality was that she barely had time for MRE's and trips to the head.

Still, the trip was as breathtaking as it was routine. The domed canopy of the Pelican's cockpit offered Marzi a panoramic view of the clearest, bluest sky she had ever seen. Hours earlier, there had been purple mountains in the horizon. An hour before that, an expanse of fluffy white clouds that seemed to stretch on into eternity. It was hard to pick a favorite, but the sunsets were a strong contender, as were the starry skies that followed. And there was always a chance of spotting an _aurora borealis_ during the northernmost leg of her route.

When the instruments allowed it, she used her free time to work on a letter to her father. Major General Scone (retired) had been the one to get her to enlist all those years ago, and while her cargo runs didn't offer much in the way of excitement, he always seemed to enjoy talking shop, even when it was dull. He really only had one anecdote that resembled Marzi's duties--that of an eleven-hour patrol mission he had performed as a young lieutenant-- and he would tell and retell this story every time they talked. She had lost count of how many times she had heard it, but she liked the story nonetheless. It was proof that she wasn't the only one who could find fascination in all the little, quiet features of the mundane.

If she ever managed to finish the letter, her next order of leisure was a trashy romance novel one of her friends had loaned her. Marzi had never made it past the first chapter. The writing was lousy, but she felt an obligation to at least finish the book, but the truth was that she only kept the thing with her because she liked the cover art. There, beneath the overheated title, a dashing, well-muscled man cradled a buxom lass in his arms, his long hair contained only by a low ponytail and the whims of the desert winds. Once, Marzi had been holding a pen while she admired the artwork, and had absentmindedly drawn a line over the hero's right eye, and an "x" over his left cheek. She hoped that her friend wouldn't notice when she finally returned the book. Failing this, Marzi hoped that she could convince her friend that these lines were just idle scribbles, and had no special meaning.

Maybe she could find a new copy in Yahhoy and just give her that as a replacement.

She took a minute to check her readings, and once she was satisfied that she was still on course, she went back to her letter, only to find that her pen wouldn't write. She made some frustrated scribbles on the margins of the page, and just when the first lines of ink appeared, an alarm went off.

"Enemy fire?!" Marzi said when she recognized the sound.


	2. Into the Fire

There was a reason the Royal Military handled these cargo shipments to Yahhoy. Much of Marzi's flight plan took her over potentially hostile territory. There was always a potential risk that some overly ambitious bandit might open fire on her with a rocket launcher. But this had never happened in the three years since Marzi began flying the Central-Yahhoy route. Command had deemed the risk "present, but minimal." In other words, the route was dangerous enough to send an RM pilot instead of a civilian, but not _so_ dangerous to escort the pilot with a fighter jets. This had always made sense to Marzi--there was a serious shortage of fighter jets, after all--but as she struggled to evade the incoming missile, she suddenly became hyper-aware of how poorly suited her Pelican PU-12 was to a combat situation.

"Come _on_! Just _turn_!" she shouted as she pulled the stick as far to the left as she could. The Pelican was designed for many things, but maneuverability wasn't one of them. She usually made this trip in the sleeker Jackrabbit MV-84, and it occurred to her that this might explain why she had never been fired upon until now. Banking left was like trying to turn a doorknob with one finger. And then, just when it seemed that it wouldn't be enough...

The missile streaked past, barely grazing her right wing. It was a minor relief for Marzi, but she knew better than to relax. For one thing, she couldn't assume that her enemy would give up so easily. For another, she still had to get the Pelican righted and back on course. Her fuel tanks carried a little more than what was needed for a thirteen hour flight, but not much. Every minute she spent diverted from her course increased the chances that she would run out of gas before she reached the Yahhoy Airport.

The radar showed no sign of other aircraft. That was encouraging. If that missile came from the ground, then her best bet was to push forward and put as much distance as possible between herself and the enemy position. As she righted the Pelican, Marzi also made sure to descend to a lower altitude. Doing this ran the risk of giving her attacker an easier target, but if they were using surface-to-air weapons then they were probably used to firing them at a steep angle. Flying lower could keep her out of range, or at least hide her from their radar.

Then the alarm sounded again, and Marzi spotted a new blip on her own radar. This missile was coming from the opposite direction. Without realizing it, she had plunged into a trap. And since this shot was coming towards her instead of trailing her from behind, she would have less time to act. Desperately, she pulled the stick to the right, even as she doubted that it would do much good. Reality soon confirmed her fears, and as the missile zeroed in on her, she used the only card left that she had to play, and killed power to her Number Four engine.

She jerked to one side and felt the straps strain against her as the everything listed to one side. Through wincing eyes, she peered at the instruments, certain that she had been hit. But no. The radar showed the missile had slipped past her, and now continued on its merry way. As for the Pelican, it was now circling in a wide spiral, slowly descending to the forest below.

"All right, all right," she said, troubled by the anxiousness in her own voice. "We're okay. It's okay. We knew this would happen." She always used "we" when talking to herself, and found that strangely fascinating, but set that aside in favor of righting the plane.

There were four engines on the Pelican, two mounted to each wing. The handy thing about abruptly shutting one of them off was that it let you bank more sharply than you could manage with just the stick. On the other hand, her little stunt had nearly pulled the fuselage apart. The engineer who designed the Pelican PU-12 was probably rolling over in his grave over what she had just done. But the ship _was_ still in one piece, so he could take some comfort in that. As for her slow spiral, it would have been easy to correct that... at a higher altitude. The quickest way to get back on course was to kill power to the Number One engine on the opposite wing, which would balance out the thrust.

None of this was exactly standard procedure, but Marzi had been flying all manner of aircraft for over fifteen years. She had learned every trick in the book, and several more that were too tricky for print. Her favorite lessons had all come from instructors who started with "Now if anyone asks, _you didn't hear this from me_ , but..." Unfortunately, none of those tricks could hand-wave the mass of a Pelican PU-12. Marzi had pulled it out of the death spiral, but it would still take some time to coax it back on course.

Normally, she would also be concerned with regaining altitude, but in this mess it was just as well that she was flying so low. With two engines down, the Pelican was even slower and less maneuverable than before, so it would take that much longer to get clear of whoever was shooting at her.

And then she heard something hit the fuselage from the outside. The cadence was unmistakable. Machine gun fire.

"Oh, come _on_!" she shouted. She pulled the stick back gently, hoping that if she flew a little higher it might put her out of range. It didn't.

"Just give it up already!" she wanted to scream at them. Then again, she supposed that they had done a pretty good job so far. There was no reason for them to quit now. For a moment, she wondered what sort of treasure they thought she was hauling, and then she realized that it probably no longer mattered. Whoever they were, they had some pretty heavy anti-aircraft weaponry in the forest, which meant they must have had a base in the area. It was probably a secret, but they had just revealed themselves when their first missile failed to connect. From there, it was probably more of a mad dash to stop Marzi before she could report this to anyone.

She switched on her radio, and was immediately greeted with distorted bagpipe music. They were jamming her, although it hardly mattered, since the nearest RM outpost was well beyond communications range. Her only hope of reporting any of this was to make it to Yahhoy, which was still three hours away. No, four hours now, after what she had done with the engines.

Then the sound of gunfire hitting the fuselage again, followed by a rumble that shook the whole plane. It didn't take her long to realize what had happened. One of the fuel lines had been damaged, and the Number Two Engine was losing power. In theory, Marzi could keep the Pelican aloft on just one engine, but the theory didn't take into account all the bad guys who would be shooting at her the whole way. All of her training and experience had been whittled down to two options:

1\. Surrender.

2\. Bail out, then possibly revisit Option 1.

Neither of these looked very promising. The enemy didn't seem interested in escorting her to a clearing where she could safely land, and there was a very real chance that she might get shot while ejecting. But it was still safer than trying to set down in a forest, and anything was better than letting them bring her down the hard way. Abandoning all other considerations, she put on her helmet and strapped on her oxygen mask, and then, just when she had her thumb on the eject button, she heard a low moan from behind her.

Her cargo. They had sedated it before loading it on board, but all the action must have woken it up. Drowsy as it was, the poor thing was still probably terrified.

For a split second that seemed to drag out for hours, she weighed RM regulations against her own feelings. There was a good chance the cargo would be lost with the ship no matter what happened. But she couldn't stomach the idea of just _leaving it behind_. She would have to live with knowing that its last memory was dying alone in a plane crash. At a time like this, a more level-headed co-pilot might have talked her into just pressing the button. But the Pelican PU-12 was a one-seater. All she had with her in the cockpit was the confused braying of a sleepy animal, and that romance novel she had forgotten to stow in her ditty bag.

Marzi flipped the cover back onto the eject button, and grabbed the stick with both hands.

"Time to write a new trick," she muttered to herself.


	3. Grounded

There was an old saying that any landing you could walk away from was a good one. Even by that low bar, Marzi's "landing" was terrible. She couldn't really call what she had done a "trick". It certainly wasn't something she wanted to pass along to anyone else, for fear that they might imitate it and end up dead.

The one positive, aside from Marzi still being alive and unhurt, was that the enemy had stopped shooting at her partway through her descent. So perhaps she had finally made it out of their territory, or maybe they just assumed she was already crashing so there was no need to bother.

The bad news was that Marzi hadn't actually _"landed"_ in the strictest sense. Her plan to reach the ground had mostly relied upon the durable construction of the Pelican PU-12. As it descended into the treetops, every branch it hit on the way down helped slow it down, and this had allowed her to safely rotate the engines into vertical take-off mode. It wasn't the intended use of the VTOL system, but by that point the engines were too low on power for that anyway. Against all odds, Marzi had managed to angle the Pelican into a pair of evergreen trees, and the battered fuselage wedged between them. The trees gave way, but other trees broke their fall, and the final outcome left the Pelican balanced precariously on top of a pile of broken trees, about six feet off the ground. So not much of a _"landing"_ at all. And Marzi wouldn't be able to _walk_ away, not without climbing and crawling first.

She checked on the cargo and hastily decided that the animal was still alive, but fast asleep. The sedative was intended to keep it under for at least another six hours, and Marzi didn't have time to wait for it to wake up. The enemy would be here soon, and it was imperative that she get as far from the crash site as possible. All she could do for the poor thing was to open the bay door on the back of the Pelican and and unlock the habitat crate it was inside. At least then it would have a fair chance of escaping into the forest. After that, it was on its own. She hoped the little guy would be okay. Hope was all she could offer.

As for herself, Marzi gathered her things and quickly took stock of the situation. She had a sidearm, a WALTER P-37 with sixteen bullets in the clip. Her ditty bag held two MRE's, a canteen, iodine tablets for disinfecting water, a compass, an unfinished letter to her father, and the trashy romance novel her friend had loaned her (Morale was important in situations like these.)

She checked her jacket, and confirmed the presence of a knife and a small pack of Hoi Poi capsules. The capsules included more advanced survival equipment, but most of it wouldn't be of much use to her while she was on the move.

Her immediate plan was simple: Avoid being spotted, and head west to reach a highway that ran alongside the forest. A motorcycle in one of her capsules would then take her at least part of the way to Yahhoy, and then she could either radio for help or hitchhike the rest of the way.

It would be easier said than done. The terrain of the forest was rough and uneven, and she had already seen just how persistent the enemy could be. She checked her compass, and started on her way.

Thirty seconds later, Marzi returned to the crash site and left one of her MRE's open near the bay door of the Pelican. She knew she had to leave the cargo behind, but there was no sense letting the poor guy go hungry.


	4. The Audacity of Yamcha-- Hope!   Hope is What I Meant to Say!

The first night was usually the worst. Marzi had always enjoyed the outdoors, so she was accustomed to camping, even with minimal supplies, but there was a big difference with survival situations like these. In this case, she had just finished crashing her plane in a forest, and she was probably being hunted by enemy soldiers. This was the part no one ever planned for. It wasn't just "roughing it", it was coping with the bumps and bruises and the sudden shock of abandoning a climate-controlled cockpit to face the wilderness. It was the sudden realization that normal survival tricks like building a fire were now bad ideas, because the smoke would tip off the bad guys.

Marzi had found a reasonably comfortable spot under a tree and used on of her Hoi-Poi capsules. The device was about the size of a large pharmaceutical tablet, but once she pressed the button on the end, it burst open to reveal its contents, which were many times larger than the capsule itself. Marzi had no idea how they worked; right now she was just grateful that they did, although she wished they made less noise. But since a fire was out of the question, and the temperature was already dropping, she had to take the chance.

The Royal Military called them "emergency tents", but everyone she knew in the service called them "body bags". When the smoke cleared from the capsule, Marzi found one of them lying at her feet. It looked like a camouflage-patterned blanket, but it was designed to be enclosed entirely around a person... with little room for anything else. The material was supposed to contain special insulation, and there were hand warmer packets inside. Marzi chose a fairly level spot on the ground, then covered it with whatever loose branches she could find, and laid the bag on top of it. Then she gathered a pile of more branches, slipped halfway into the bag, and scattered them around herself before zipping herself inside. There was a ventilation port near her head, but otherwise she was cut off from the outside world. This may have been comforting to some, but at the moment, it just reminded Marzi of how alone she was out here. A fire would have been something, at least.

She needed to sleep while she had the chance, but now that she was zipped in for the night, she found she couldn't. Normally, Marzi was capable of falling asleep just about anywhere, but today had been more stressful than most. She wasn't used to lying awake like this. What did insomniacs do to pass the time? Briefly, she considered digging into her ditty bag for the book she had, since she was pretty sure there was a pen light in there with it, but she was too tired to put in the effort. And so, like so many other sleepless nights over the past three years, her thoughts drifted to Yamcha.

Yamcha was a martial artist from West City who had competed in three of the _Tenkaichi Budokai_ events. In the first, he had lost to Jackie Chun, a fighter so legendary that simply sharing the ring with him was an accolade in itself. Chun's victory was so decisive that it made Yamcha look like he was standing still, but that didn't matter much to Marzi or her friends in what became the Yamcha Fan Club. He was young and handsome and there was a gentleness that belied his fearsome strength. He hated losing, but he also took it in stride. There would always be a next time. Marzi's affection for him was the textbook definition of a schoolgirl crush, but there was more to it than that. The rest of the Yamcha Fan Club eventually moved on, and Marzi thought she had as well, but she never quite forgot about _him_.

Yamcha's next Budokai appearance came three years later. By then, Marzi's father had pushed for her to enlist, but she had managed to defer that decision until after the date of the tournament. It was a decision she came to regret, as she got to watch Yamcha lose his first-round match in brutal fashion. His opponent, Tien Shinhan, had picked him apart, but instead of ending the battle by ring-out, he decided to break Yamcha's leg as a cruel finale. Yamcha returned in the next tournament, but by then Marzi was too embroiled in the Royal Military, working to help the world recover from the King Piccolo crisis.

It wasn't that she had lost interest in Yamcha. On the contrary, watching him get stretchered out of the Budokai made her realize that she cared _too much_. Watching his friends--his actual friends--go with him to the hospital, forced her to accept that she was on the outside looking in. That hadn't been so bad before, when she could at least share the experience with her own friends. But she had gone to the 22nd Budokai by herself, and there was no one to console her when Yamcha was hurt, no one to tell her that it would be all right. The rowdy spectator next to her that day seemed _thrilled_ that Tien would use such a "hard core" technique, and hoped for more of the same brutality in the later matches. She decided then that she had to let Yamcha go, for her own peace of mind.

And yet, she saw him again, when the aliens invaded in '62. While the brass was deciding how to respond, the news media followed the aliens to a remote location and televised their activities. No one knew what they came for or how to fight them, so everyone at the base was glued to the TV set in the barracks, watching the coverage in their flight suits while they waited for a go-sign that never came. But instead of fighting the Royal Military, the aliens challenged a band of martial artists, including Yamcha, Tien Shinhan, and someone who looked a lot like King Piccolo.

For a brief moment, that had been encouraging for Marzi. The idea that Yamcha had not only recovered from his injury, but befriended the man who hurt him. It filled her with hope, and then it was dashed to bits when she saw Yamcha killed during the battle. Tien was killed too, and she remembered wondering if there was some kindred spirit out there who had once been part of the Tien Shinhan Fan Club, watching the same video and feeling the same dread.

And once more, Marzi had to let Yamcha go. This time, he was truly beyond her reach--beyond _anyone's_ reach. No one even knew how the battle ended that day, let alone what was done with the bodies. By the time the authorities arrived on the scene, there was nothing to be found. The aliens were gone, but no one knew how or why. Everyone just had to live with the mystery, Marzi included.

And then the Cell Games happened, and she saw him _again_. The footage of the Cell Games had become something of a legend over the past three years. ZTV attempted to film that battle, and Cell himself didn't seem to object, but the action was too fast for them to capture with a single camera, which was eventually damaged during the event. Tapes of the broadcast were considered collectors items among fans, though most people dismissed them as unwatchable. You would see people standing still in Cell's ring, then a close up of Mr. Satan for commentary, and then the camera would pan back and forth across what looked like an empty ring, or up into the air for what looked like flashes of movement.

As a sporting event, it was a lousy production, but for a lot of people the lack of clear footage was what made it so fascinating. Mr. Satan's fans loved it because the footage was the only evidence that the battle had even happened at all. Conspiracy theorists loved it because there one of the aliens from '62 could be spotted on the sidelines, along with King Piccolo. What did it mean? No one knew. For Marzi, the main highlight was approximately thirty seconds' worth of the tape that showed a man in orange with scars on his left cheek and right eye. He never actually joined the battle, at least in the part that was filmed, but the main issue was that he was _supposed to be dead_.

Marzi didn't understand any of it, but the enigma reawakened old feelings that she wasn't sure she wanted anymore. Somehow, Yamcha had survived _everything_ that had happened to him over the years. Defeat, injury, seeming death. He had recovered from all of these, and when Cell had challenged the world, Yamcha had risen to the occasion. It was inspiring! Also handsome, but mostly inspiring.

But it didn't really change anything. He was still forever beyond her reach, and she had no way of knowing if he even survived the Cell Games, or where he would have gone after Mr. Satan won. It was frustrating, but comforting at the same time. If someone like Yamcha could keep coming back, overcoming one setback after another, then why couldn't _she_? A lot of her friends idolized Mr. Satan after he defeated Cell, since it proved he was the strongest fighter of all time. That was all well and good, but she preferred a hero who could lose once in a while, someone who could come back from the brink, someone a little more down to earth.

And these were the thoughts that whirled through Marzi's head until sleep finally came to her.


	5. Enter the Brown Ribbon

The next two nights were slightly better, though mostly because Marzi was doing better at tiring herself out during the day. It frustrated her that she couldn't take her time and enjoy these woods properly, but the circumstances just wouldn't allow it. Each morning, she packed up her things, checked her compass to make sure she was still bearing west, and then she arranged a bunch of branches around the collar of her jacket.

One of the key tips she had learned about wilderness survival in hostile territory was to disguise the outline of her body. If anyone out here was still looking for her, they were scanning the trees for any sign of movement, and anything shaped like a person. The outline of her head, neck, and shoulders was likely to catch their eye, even at a distance, and so she used foliage to break up that shape. Up close, it just made Marzi look silly, but if the enemy were close enough for that, it would probably already be too late. The idea was to fool them before that, so that they never think to get any closer. At a distance, they might see her dart from one tree to the next, and think she was just a deer, or a rustling bush.

The rest was up to her flight suit, which was a brownish green that roughly matched the surroundings, and her "body bag", which was now wrapped around her shoulders like a poncho. Marzi had stuck some branches onto this as well, though she could only do so much without a good adhesive.

Moving through the forest was easy enough, at least. Marzi had spent so much time in woods like these that it almost felt like a nature hike, except that the stakes were higher. The flatter, clearer terrain was much easier to travel upon, but it often led her away from where she wanted to go. At the same time, she couldn't just climb across every obstacle in her path, since it would slow her down and wear her out that much faster.

Every hundred paces or so, she found a tree to hide behind and listened for anyone who might be lurking nearby. Gradually, this check became less frequent, and Marzi would stop every two hundred paces. Then every five hundred. By midday she had begun to question whether anyone was looking for her at all. She couldn't rule out the possibility, but it was difficult to remain vigilant when there was no sign of trouble.

Eventually, Marzi found a rudimentary trail. It looked natural, the product of two gentle inclines coming together at a particular spot. Following the path of least resistance, animals walked along it, eventually wearing it down into something almost like a narrow dirt road. Marzi took a moment to admire some of the tracks they had left behind. All of them were headed in the same direction she was going.

Had she been more alert, better rested, or perhaps less accustomed to these surroundings, Marzi might have noticed an old cigarette butt on the trail as well, but she was too grateful for the sign that she was making progress. She hiked the trail for the next hour, then paused at a small brook to refill her canteen. Then she heard the sound of engines in the distance. Something was headed her way.

* * *

"This is dumb. We're not gonna find anything out here."

"Yeah, well take it up with the general, not me."

They were two men in military clothing, though "uniforms" was probably stretching things a bit. Marzi had them pegged as mercenaries almost as soon as they stepped off of their hoverbikes. The vehicles had some camouflage paint, but otherwise they looked more like civilian models. One man's attire looked vintage, like he'd bought it from a military surplus store. The other was dressed in an assortment of items from different branches of the service: Army, Navy, Royal Guard, and a few others. She wondered if he was a deserter, but his muttonchops and handlebar mustache made this seem unlikely to her, unless he quit the service because he didn't like the regulations on facial hair.

The decals on their bikes told the story: The Brown Ribbon Army. Marzi had been briefed on them more than once. Years ago, the _Red_ Ribbon Army had been a threat to global security. Her father had often spoken of them when she was a little girl. It wasn't until she grew up that she learned just how dangerous they had truly been. For most of its history, the Red Ribbon was at least as powerful as the Royal Military, and for a long time, there had genuine fears that the Red Ribbon would eventually tip the scales and conquer the world. And then, one day, the entire organization simply... disintegrated. To this day, no one was entirely sure what had happened. The leading theory was a power struggle among their officer corps. Their supreme leader, Commander Red, was found dead in an armored bunker, having apparently been shot at pointblank range. There were stories of mass desertions, looting, and pitched battles throughout their fortress.

In the aftermath, several splinter groups emerged, each of them led by commanders who had survived Red's downfall. Admiral Green and his Green Crevat Fleet terrorized the southern seas for a few years. General Copper had a secret airfield hidden under the desert. Many of these factions simply called themselves "The Red Ribbon Army", though they were really just small bands of mercenaries led by junior officers who hoped to trade on the Red Ribbon's legendary reputation.

Of all of these rogue armies, the Brown Ribbon was one of the more successful. Brown had been a lieutenant colonel when the Red Ribbon base fell, but she managed to convince the criminal underworld that she was one of the last surviving members of Commander Red's inner circle. Mercenaries flocked to her banner, which promised sound strategy and big paydays. Unlike the other Red Ribbon wannabes, Brown never dared to reach beyond her grasp. She played a long game, building her power base gradually over time and never risking more than she was prepared to lose. The others had impossible dreams of world conquest, of succeeding where Red had mysteriously failed, but Brown's command was strictly a for-profit enterprise.

"You think the general actually cares what goes on out here?" one of the men asked. They were armed with rifles, but neither of them seemed very diligent about handling them.

"I was in the room when the colonel reported in," the other said. "And she wasn't too happy about bagging a cargo ship with no cargo and no pilot."

"The plane alone's probably worth _something_ ," the other suggested.

"And if we were Brown Ribbon Salvage and Towing, that might mean something, dummy," the first one said. "General Brown didn't set us up out here to catch small fry. Just like King Furry didn't send a big cargo plane all the way out here with nothing in it."

"Yeah, I guess you're right."

"There must have been something important on that crate, and if we can't find it, then maybe we can find the pilot and get him to tell us what we're looking for."

"Yeah, but not here. I mean, if this guy survived the crash, he wouldn't be stupid enough to wander so close to our base."

"Yeah, well, maybe he hit his head a couple of times on the way down. Anyway, if we don't find him, that's the colonel's problem, not mine. But until someone turns him up, we're gonna have to wander around out here every day for a while."

"Hey, what's that over there?"

They walked up to the spot where Marzi had been filling her canteen. Marzi held her breath and bit her lower lip.

"What's what?"

"I thought there were some ferns or something around this spot."

"Oh, come on. Like you'd remember a thing like that."

"I know what I'm talking about. Look, there's a boot print over here."

"Big deal. Sarge was probably out here last night taking a leak."

They continued to argue about it for the next few minutes, never suspecting Marzi was nearby. Thirty feet above them, she clung to the branch of a tree overlooking the brook, and hoped that they would move on soon.

While she waited, she tried to take advantage of the elevation and looked for some sign of their home base. If it was nearby, she couldn't spot it. But if she was already this close to it, then it might not matter. There would be other patrols, and she couldn't hide from them like this for long.


	6. As Easy As Bending a Fork

Once it was safe to climb down, Marzi scouted around the area, hoping to find some good news. There really wasn't any.

The Brown Ribbon's base wasn't very big, but it was big enough that they could send out a lot of people to search the woods. Marzi gathered that the anti-aircraft weapons they had used to bring down her plane were installed throughout the forest, and operated remotely. From the sound of things, this was just an outpost of General Brown's larger operation, and the mercenaries stationed here seemed to be very aware of it. They seemed to be competent soldiers, but low morale had whittled away at discipline in the camp. That didn't make them any less dangerous, but it probably explained why they hadn't tracked her down so far.

The problem was that she had been heading west to reach the nearest highway, and this had led her straight towards the heart of enemy territory. Now, she was so close to the base that it would be very tricky to move away from it and go around without being found. The terrain to the north was too uneven and steep to cross easily. The land to the south was more forgiving, but it looked like the Brown Ribbon Army had been cutting down the trees in that area. If Marzi tried to move through that clearing, they would spot her for sure.

The one advantage she had was that these were all ground troops. They were used to thinking two-dimensionally, and so when they searched the forest, they never bothered to look up from the forest floor. They would circle around trees to make sure no one was hiding behind them, but they never thought to check if anyone was hiding in the branches. Marzi had avoided three patrols this way already. It was a good thing she was so adept at climbing trees, although she doubted this would last forever.

For her, a stalemate was as good as a defeat. Hiding from these people wasn't going to solve anything. She would eventually run out of supplies, and climbing trees was a waste of time and energy. The same was true for doubling back and finding a safer route to the highway. The longer she remained in this forest, the greater her chances were of getting caught.

From the tree she was currently hiding in, she had a clear view of the Brown base, and the dirt road that led to its main gate. The irony of it frustrated her. There were all sorts of provisions and equipment in their camp, which was the one place she didn't dare go. And in her frustration, she began to ask herself _why_ she didn't dare. Marzi never thought of herself as someone who lived dangerously, but she had a way of talking herself into things, especially when there was no one around to talk her out of them.

She couldn't figure out all the details, so she took her time and thought it through. One of her hobbies was bending forks. From an early age, she had been fascinated by the idea. To a child, metal flatware was practically unbreakable, and yet stage magicians could seemingly twist and contort the metal without any effort at all. Marzi always liked magic tricks, but what made forkbending so special was that it wasn't _just_ an illusion. The lovely assistants always got put back together, and the rabbits were never inside the hats, but the forks were _really_ getting bent. The only trick was that they made it seem easier than it really was. Sometimes it was a special fork made of bendable alloy, sometimes it was a normal fork that had been bent and straightened to weaken it beforehand. Sometimes the fork was already bent from the start of the act, and the performer's *real* trick was in making it _seem_ to be straight before revealing the bend that was already there.

She had studied every technique she could find. Forks were easy to come by, after all, and she eventually earned the nickname "Fork Girl" from her classmates. For a time, she had dreamed of becoming a professional forkbender, until her father convinced her to enlist. Marzi had to admit that forkbending was probably never a viable career choice. Still, she kept the lessons she had learned from her hobby. Most problems only seemed difficult when faced head-on. Usually, all you needed was a little creativity, or a little guile.

* * *

"You still owe me a hundred zenni. When are you going to pay up?"

"What's your hurry? It's not like you'll get to spend it anytime soon. No one's getting leave anytime soon. Not until someone turns up that pilot we shot down."

"I just like to have my money handy in case something comes up. Now answer the question."

"Look, I'm broke, all right? Next payday, okay? Unless you'll take collateral..."

"What _kind_ of collateral?"

"You can have my Super Saiyan shirt. It's a collector's item."

"What the hell is a Super Saiyan?"

"Nobody knows. Someone just found a box full of shirts floating in a harbor. They all have "The Super Saiyan" printed on the front. The way I heard it, it fell from outer space."

"Are you high right now?"

"No, listen to me. Someone got curious and carbon dated the shirts. They're like a _thousand years old_."

"That's stupid. Nobody had T-shirts back then."

"Not on _Earth_ , no. That's why people think aliens made them, and dumped them in the ocean."

"Well if the damn _aliens_ didn't want the things, why should I?"

"Because they're _mysterious_! And there's only about three hundred of them."

"I think I'd rather just have my money."

"Aw, c'mon... you don't even understand how much it's wor-- awk!"

The Brown Ribbon Army was apparently a big believer in the buddy system. All of their patrollers worked in pairs, which meant that Marzi had to be very careful. Her sidearm didn't have the range needed to pull off an ambush, but she had a dart gun in one of her stash of emergency capsules, complete with tranquilizers. It wasn't standard issue with the Royal Military, but she had learned how to handle it during her various adventures with wild animals, and there were times when she found it more useful than conventional firearms. It was quieter, for one thing.

The man she hadn't shot came running towards the general direction she had fired from. That was sloppy. The smart thing to do would be to take cover and call for backup, but he was still thinking like he was on patrol. This suited her just fine, as he ran past her hiding place and into...

"When did this get here?"

One of Marzi's other emergency capsules had been a small house. It was more of a shed, really, just a more comfortable living space for if she were stranded for a long period of time. She hadn't used it before, because the smoke from its wood stove chimney would give away her position, but now that was exactly what she was after.

The soldier circled around the shed carefully, pointing his rifle at it the entire time, as though expecting someone to jump out at him at any moment. When no one did, he slowly opened the door and took a look inside. What he found was Marzi's secret weapon: Clutter. Without really meaning to, she had filled the shed over the years with an assortment of odds and ends. Pine cones, cool-looking rocks she had found, forks she had used for practice bending, and whatever else she had left in the shed since the last time she had used it.

Normally, the soldier would have just ignored all of these useless items, but in this context, he was certain that this place had something to do with the pilot he had been ordered to find, and so he felt compelled to investigate. And _that_ gave Marzi time to move from her hiding place to the shed. Her movements were quick and quiet, borne from years of careful interactions with easily startled animals. When she reached the doorway, she drew her sidearm. Now the WALTER P-37 was useful. At this range, it couldn't miss.

"Drop it," Marzi said. The man was looking over a stack of old magazines and a book about geodes. At the sound of Marzi's voice, he nearly jumped out of his boots, but he had enough sense to still himself and lower his weapon.

"Good," Marzi said. "Now, take off your jacket."


	7. Among the Enemy

The hard part was tying up her two captives while keeping a gun trained on them the whole time. Fortunately, the one who had seen her collection of bent forks was more afraid of her than she was of them. The one she tranqed turned out to be more difficult. Marzi supposed that if she had it to do over again, she would have made his partner do the tying for her. But it was done, and no other patrols had stumbled upon her in the meantime, so she was feeling pretty confident about her plan. She would need that confidence, as her plan amounted to driving into the Brown Ribbon Army's camp and trying to pass as one of their own troops.

"Where's your partner?" asked one of the guards as she pulled up to the entrance on her stolen hoverbike.

"We think we found something," Marzi replied through her motorcycle helmet. She pointed her thumb over her shoulder as she spoke. "He's staying put to keep an eye on it, and ordered me to report it in."

"You found the _pilot_?" the guard asked, more relieved than excited by the prospect.

" _Three_ pilots," Marzi said. " _And_ they're heavily armed. It'll take some doing to capture them. Can I go now? I really need to see the colonel."

The guard waved her on and she proceeded through the gate. The camp was mostly a cluster of dome capsule buildings with a few large tents and a motor pool. At the earliest opportunity, she pulled up beside a dome and found an out-of-the way spot where no one would see her. There, she ditched the helmet and jacket she had taken from one prisoner and put on the jacket worn by the other.

She was counting on the lack of uniforms in the camp to conceal her presence. Her Royal Military pilot suit would stick out in a place like this, but only because there weren't any pilots in the camp. Throw on a navy or army coat, though--with a Brown Ribbon patch sewed onto the sleeve-- and suddenly her own jumpsuit wasn't so out of place.

Mercenary armies like these were all alike. Regardless of their commanders' ideals or goals, the bulk of their fighting forces were disillusioned soldiers who mostly cared about money and having things their own way. They joined groups like the Brown Ribbon Army to get away from strict rules and martial discipline, which meant that you always ended up with slack protocol, or no protocol at all. Search parties that don't watch each other's backs. Guards who don't ask for identification. Thousands of kilometers away, General Brown probably understood this problem and accepted it as the inevitable side-effect of her business. She would forgive it as long as the profit margins were favorable, and only really crack down on her soldiers when a major failure took place. And for a while the troops would straighten up and act a bit more professionally, until they would eventually relax and slack off again.

But for Marzi, that principle was working in her favor. She tried to keep a low profile, but for the most part no one was too interested in what she was doing. This trick would have never worked in a smaller camp, where everyone knew everyone personally, but here, she had just enough anonymity to wander around.

She spent some time familiarizing herself with the base's layout, then got down to business. The first thing she did was to find a proper map of the area. The highway she had been looking for lay seven miles west-by-south, though she doubted that she would be able to take the direct route. She would need some sort of diversion for that. Something that would keep them too busy to bother with search parties and patrols.

Marzi found a quiet spot and studied her stolen map further. As she had suspected, the missile launchers and other anti-aircraft weapons were installed throughout the forest, and operated from a control center in the camp. Marzi soon determined that this control center was too well-protected for her to sabotage. So was the building they called the "Vault", which stored whatever stolen cargo and valuables they had taken. So was the radio room, where the Brown Ribbon's jamming equipment was located.

The motor pool, on the other hand, was a sitting duck. Take that away, and nearly everyone in the camp would be as cut off from civilization as Marzi was. There would always be a few hoverbikes and trucks roaming the forest, but the bulk of their vehicles were here, and if Marzi could take those out somehow, or at least threaten them, then they probably wouldn't be so fixated on looking for her.

She went to the mess tent and helped herself to some powdered eggs and toast while she considered her plan. No one seemed to notice her at all, which somehow made her more nervous. She had already taken a few risks to get this far, and she felt like her luck would run out at any minute.

* * *

Eventually, Marzi settled on setting the entire motor pool on fire. She snuck into the yard and hid under one of the larger trucks. If anyone spotted her, she could pass herself off as a mechanic, at least for a short time. Once she began opening the drainplugs and letting motor oil spill out onto the ground, however, it would be a lot tougher to explain her actions. But, miraculously, it never came to that. Marzi drained several engines this way, and no one ever noticed.

It wasn't until she went to find a flare gun that things went sour for her.

"I can smell oil on you from here!" cried the supply clerk when Marzi tried to bluff her way through a requisition. "What are you trying to do, get yourself killed!?"

"I'm not going to _use_ it," Marzi lied, "I just needed to get one for one of the search teams. They'll be going deep into the forest and--"

"What are _they_ trying to do, then?" the supply clerk protested. "Those thing aren't _toys_ , you know! Everyone thinks they're safe because they're not really weapons, but the flares get extremely hot. If you're not careful, you could set the whole forest on fire!"

The clerk was right, of course. Marzi had no intention of using it in the forest, but she couldn't exactly tell her that without explaining what it was for, or that she expected the Brown Ribbon to have the blaze put out before it could spread to the surrounding wilderness.

"Look," she said, "if I don't have this in the next five minutes, the colonel will be _furious_ , and--"

"Nice try," the clerk said. "But I'm betting he won't be _nearly_ as upset as he was the _last_ time I let one of you take a flare gun without proper authorization. What's your name?"

If things had been different, Marzi might have found a way to talk herself out of this situation, or she might have found some other solution. Instead, the tension of her predicament and the weariness from wandering the forest had taken too great a toll on her patience. She pulled out her pistol and held it up where the clerk could see it. "I don't have time for this," Marzi said. "Just give me the flare."

"Fine, fine," the clerk muttered. "Just let me look up which shelf it's on..." She slowly returned to her desk, and for a moment it looked like she was going to cooperate, but then she reached under the desktop and an alarm sounded. In the split second it took for Marzi to realize what had happened, the clerk ran for it, disappearing into the rows of shelves that took up most of the warehouse.

"Take that, dummy!" she shouted, but Marzi was too preoccupied trying to decide what to do next to worry about the parting shot.

At last, she panicked, and decided that if she managed to get out of the building fast enough, she could pretend to be responding to the alarm instead of being the cause. But before she could get out of the doorway, she met three soldiers who trained their weapons on her. Marzi was still holding her handgun, which probably told them everything they needed to know.

It was all over.


	8. Mission Accomplished*

Things had been going so well, but now that she had finally been caught, Marzi began to realize how foolish it was to sneak into the Brown Ribbon Army's base like this. The best case scenario here was that she could convince them that she was the pilot they had been looking for, and not a thief among their own ranks.

It occurred to her that her father might never see the letter she had been writing to him, and everyone would probably think she had died in the crash. She knew it was futile to dwell on things like this, but she couldn't force herself to consider anything else.

And then, one of the soldiers pointed at the handgun she was holding. "You're gonna need something a lot bigger than that, ma'am!" he said. "Hurry up and get moving!"

Marzi didn't know what he was talking about, or why he was pointing the other way, like he wanted her to leave. Finally, one of his comrades shoved her aside.

"We need medical supplies, fast!" he growled. "Where's that damned clerk?! If she gives me any lip over _this_ , I've got half a mind to--"

Marzi finally stepped through the door, unsure of what else to do. The first soldier kept tugging on her arm. "Go!" he said. "They need all the help they can get!"

"What's going on?" Marzi shouted over the alarm.

"You mean you don't _know_? There's a _dinosaur_ running loose in the camp!"

"Dinosaur?" Marzi asked. But the soldier ducked into the supply building without responding.

It didn't take her long to find out what he was talking about. Marzi just followed everyone else in the camp, until she found them all fighting against or running from an enormous stegosaurus. Their bullets were useless against its thick hide, and every swipe of its spiked tail took out everything in its path: vehicles, people, and chunks of buildings. Marzi couldn't believe her eyes.

"Chuckles?" she gasped.

Chuckles had been her cargo on the trip to Yahhoy. The farmers in that region had a dire need for various resources. Changes in their ecology had seen a rise in predator populations, and those predators soon became daring enough to wander into farmland and prey on sheep, cows, turkeys, and other livestock. To combat the problem, the government had implemented a solution used in the Eastlands: using stegosaurs trained to protect the livestock. Chuckles was part of the effort to introduce the practice in the Yahhoy region. Or he would have been if Marzi's plane hadn't been shot down.

She had never expected to see the little guy again, but apparently he had woken up at the crash site and wandered all the way here. Marzi wasn't sure if he was looking for her or just anyone with food and shelter. He was perfectly tame, but the Brown Ribbon didn't know that, and so their first reaction to seeing him at their doorstep was to attack him.

Marzi wasn't sure she could calm him down at this point, so she didn't bother trying. Instead, she ran to the camp's kitchen and built a crude torch with a rag wrapped around some salad tongs. She lit it with the pilot light on a stove, then headed back to the motor pool and tossed it onto the oil she had spilled everywhere. The fire wasn't as destructive as she had hoped, but it did spread to cover most of the yard, and it was enough to compound the army's problems.

Gradually, the soldiers in the base pulled back from Chuckles, as they realized that it was more important to fight the fire. At least they stood a chance of winning that battle. Once it was safe, Marzi approached the dinosaur with a handful of lettuce she had taken from the kitchen.

"That'll do, Chuckles," she called to him, slowly raising her hands toward him. He started to calm down, and approached Marzi cautiously.

"Yeah, that's a good boy," Marzi said. She backed away slowly, not out of fear, but to hopefully lead Chuckles towards the edge of the camp, further away from anyone who might notice them. "You want a snack?"

When he was close enough, he accepted the lettuce from her hand and lovingly rubbed his face against her as he chewed. Marzi hadn't really spent any time with Chuckles before their flight, so she was somewhat surprised to see him acting so affectionately towards her. Maybe that MRE she had left behind for him had made a bigger impact than she could have guessed.

"Was that good, buddy? Yeah, you're a _good boy_ , aren't you? Come on, let's get out of here."

She eventually found the hoverbike she had brought into the camp, and rode it back out, but slowly enough for Chuckles to keep up. There wasn't much point in trying to hide now. The Brown Ribbon Army was too distracted to bother her anyway. Besides, why would they bother her now, unless they wanted to tangle with Chuckles again?

* * *

Major Crumb was the officer of the day at the Royal Military outpost at Yahhoy Airport. His duty for the afternoon had been very light and uneventful, until one of his subordinates reported to him that a truck had arrived with a shipment for him. Confused, he went out to the loading area and found Marzi standing next to a flatbed semi. Standing on the trailer was Chuckles, the ten-meter-long stegosaurus. The truck driver was there too, looking almost as confused as himself.

"Well, I couldn't just _leave_ them there," the trucker explained, "and she wouldn't get in the truck unless the dinosaur could come too, so..."

There were already dinosaur handlers on hand working to coax Chuckles down from the trailer. He wanted down badly enough, but he was also nervous about the ramp they had set up, and the pumpkins they held out to entice him weren't quite convincing enough.

"I, er, lost the Pelican, Major," Marzi sheepishly explained. "So I'm going to need a ride back home..."

She looked like she had been through quite an ordeal, so it seemed better to get the story in his office, where they could all sit down. Crumb sighed and gestured for them all to follow him. 

[THE END]


End file.
